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Lee and Simon reflect on the turn of the year not through resolutions but through attention to time, labour, and value – what feels worth doing, and what quietly drains energy. The conversation circles embodied work, intergenerational thinking, and the midlife urge to spend less time reacting and more time building things that outlast you.

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at [email protected].

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Lee and Simon circle from Christmas silliness to showers, cocktails, bureaucracy, and grief, using humour to hold off the end-of-the-world feeling while letting something tender through. Beneath the ramble, the episode quietly lands on memory, loss, and the strange intimacy of ordinary rituals.

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• I Asked 64,182 People About “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells”. Here's What I Found Out: https://youtu.be/V5u9JSnAAU4?si=3bZKOd90pUXNdZFp

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at [email protected].

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The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/8571921679 (CC BY 2.0)

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Lee and Simon circle around the messy line between saying “no” (as self-respect) and staying relational, using condominum meetings, Portuguese/Italian slips, and a post office queue as lived examples of how “transactional” life can feel. They land on the idea that some exchanges (kindness, levity, basic decency) aren’t quid-pro-quo at all – and then veer into unfiltered joy at Olivia Colman’s acceptance speeches.

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at [email protected].

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The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/8571921679 (CC BY 2.0)

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Simon and Lee spiral from the weird intimacy of recording their friendship into the horror of AI-fuelled “chatfishing” and the prospect of being “back on the market” after loss. They end up sitting with ageing, death, and the line between cherished solitude, unacknowledged loneliness, and the hunger for simple physical affection.

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at [email protected].

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The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/8571921679 (CC BY 2.0)

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Lee talks about realising how “thin-skinned” he is at home and at work, and how that sensitivity both hurts (wanting to cry over a throwaway comment about his clothes) and helps him get more quickly to the truth of what’s actually going on emotionally. He and Simon fold this into a wider question of whether you want to be “a radiator or a drain” in relationships, and how different couples’ styles of teasing or volatility shape what feels possible or survivable in a long-term partnership.

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at [email protected].

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The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/8571921679 (CC BY 2.0)

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Simon and Lee chew over how trauma and pain can’t really be compared or ranked, even inside cushioned-but-precarious academic lives where people still don’t feel safe. They then push a fraught hypothetical about raising a daughter into a misogynist world.

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at [email protected].

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The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/8571921679 (CC BY 2.0)

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Lee and Simon meet in person for the first time in three years and move from gallbladder scares and overstretched health systems into a reflection on post-pandemic disconnection, social capital and the erosion of community. They sit with the discomfort of feeling more willing to be “a doer, the joiner” abroad than in the UK, and the unsettling knowledge that not joining in also helps democracy to unravel.

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at [email protected].

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The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/8571921679 (CC BY 2.0)

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Lee’s rebellious gallbladder and the realisation that he’s not “a box with a brain in it” spark a conversation about midlife bodies that can no longer be ignored. From Lisbon-airport dehydration to shamelessly helping-while-queue-jumping anxious Americans, they sit with the mix of pride, shame and “curiosity, not judgement” toward other people’s (and their own) fragilities.

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at [email protected].

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The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/8571921679 (CC BY 2.0)

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Lee and Simon explore what it means to remove yourself – physically and psychically – from one life while tentatively building another. A wardrobe installation in Sassari becomes an existential reflection on identity, work and the quiet liberation of decoupling.

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at [email protected].

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The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/8571921679 (CC BY 2.0)

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A lively riff on “Good luck to you Leo Grande” becomes a tender meditation on grief, intimacy and how performances can feel “mannered” or disappear into truth. Plus a quick detour into house anatomy -- those elusive eaves and the ever-misnamed “Gabel end.”

Get in touch with Lee and Simon at [email protected].

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The Midlifing logo is adapted from an original image by H.L.I.T: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/8571921679 (CC BY 2.0)